Here’s a video we made of Salman Rushdie accepting the Golden PEN award from our outgoing president, Lisa Appignanesi.
Tag: Diary (Page 7 of 30)
It’s funny how we acclimatise to the, erm, climate. Walking to the station this morning in my boots, heavy coat, woolly hat and multiple layers of underwear, I suddenly recalled with a shock that not six months ago, I was making the same journey in short trousers and flip-flops. The change in the weather happens just slow enough that it never seems improbable or extreme. Like the descent into fascism, the change happens gradually enough to go without comment, and you begin to doubt your memories of a better time, a summer’s day. And then it snows and everyone goes nuts, as if it were somehow unexpected.
Last week, Libel Reform Campaign terriers Sense About Science published a timely document on blogging and libel. Entitled So you’ve had a threatening letter. What can you do?, the booklet gives sage advice to those harassed by legal action.
Sense About Science were recently threatened with legal action themselves. Along with Dr Dalia Nield, they were threatened with libel by lawyers acting on behalf of Rodial, a company which manufactures a dubious ‘boob job cream’, which they claim can enlarge breasts without surgery! Sense About Science and Dr Nield expressed doubts about the safety and efficacy of the cream.
Following the technique of Kate Fox News, I thought I would ‘crowd source’ a poem about the Royal Wedding announcement. It is a good time to remind ourselves of ‘Do Not Exceed The Stated Dose‘ too.
#RoyalWedding, #RoyalWedding
Look how quick the news is spreading
I’m really pleased for Kate and Will
But will the tax payers foot the bill?
Gawd bless’ em, *reach for tissues*
Newspapers plan their special issues
Al Quaida rubbing hands with glee
I’ll do the photos for a reasonable fee.
Middleton to marry to some balding toff
But do you think we get a day off?
Twitter is in meltdown. Just don’t get it.
Frankly I just don’t give a shit
China plate makers at the ready!
Oh I do hope it will be on the telly
Ooo Ooo! Whoop! WOOHOOs!
Today is a good day to bury bad news.
I am reading Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter. First published in 1979, the author discusses various systems – mathematical, visual and musical, which somehow manage to talk about themselves. This self-reference, says the author, is one of the key ingredients for intelligence.
Much of the book so far has been taken up with explaining some key elements of number theory, and Hofstadter includes lengthy digressions on programming, and loops of operations nested within others. It inspired me to find a BBC BASIC emulator and write a little programme that finds prime numbers. Here is what I came up with:
10 CLS
20 PRINT "LIMIT";
30 INPUT L
40 FOR N = 3 TO L
50 FOR D = 2 TO (N-1)
60 IF N/D=INT(N/D) THEN GOTO 100
70 NEXT D
80 PRINT N;
90 GOTO 110
100 PRINT ".";
110 NEXT N
120 END
This programme asks you for a number, and it will search for prime numbers up to and including the number you give. If it finds a prime, it prints it, otherwise it just prints a dot. I chose this method of output so that one has a visual representation of how primes are distributed throughout the natural numbers, and it is easy to spot Twin Primes.
Since we’re thinking about self-reference, I might as well make an observations about this post, which is that it will probably succeed in alienating everyone. Those with no interest in maths and coding will likely think I am being terribly geeky. Meanwhile, those who do take an interest in such things will scoff at the incredible simplicity of my coding ambitions. Already one wag in the office has asked me why I don’t print all the discovered primes in an array…
The output from my programme.